“In our language, we have a word; it means, ‘They have no ears.’ They don’t listen, and that’s what was happening.”

—Marisa Miakonda Cummings, Omaha tribe member

Brenda Williams, ASLA, has been working on tribal landscapes for 20 years, but it’s what she’s learned not to do that defines her reputation: Talk first. Her work is a lesson in when and how to listen, and what to do, and not do, with what you hear. Timothy A. Schuler follows Williams as she facilitates a new master plan for Blood Run, a sacred site carved by the state lines of South Dakota and Iowa and years of exploitation. The photojournalist Louise Johns documents the land and the people.

If you don’t live in New York City, you can be forgiven for not knowing Randall’s Island. It’s not a destination park like Governors Island or a national monument like Ellis Island. It’s where the city’s residents go to play games—right up against a sewage treatment plant and some of the city’s most monumental infrastructure. After years of neglect, the playing fields and recreational amenities get a jolt of energy from MPFP, Starr Whitehouse, and Mathews Nielsen, among others.

Also in this issue: A new wetland park for Wilmington, Delaware, has layers of challenge. Jeanne Haffner explores Lawrence Halprin’s unbuilt plans for the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.; the artist Zaria Forman gives us a preview of her new series on Antarctic icebergs; and the first biography of the landscape architect James Rose asks as many questions as it answers. The full table of contents for August can be found here.

BY ADAM REGN ARVIDSON, FASLA

In the 1920s the businessman William du Pont Jr. began buying up land in northeastern Maryland, near the border with Pennsylvania and Delaware. Du Pont wanted space for peace and quiet and uninterrupted fox hunting. He called the place Foxcatcher Farm. It spanned two states and more than 7,000 acres. This was not some trackless wilderness. Because he’d bought existing homesteads, du Pont ended up with land crossed by public roadways—not ideal for fox hunts. So he built what may very well be the first wildlife crossings in the nation.

Bridges and culverts connect Foxcatcher. “These were done in the 1940s and 1950s, so it was truly a massive undertaking,” says Paul Drummond, ASLA, a landscape architect in Baltimore who has researched the crossings. Drummond’s family is from the area (some worked for the du Ponts) and, he says, his curiosity was piqued by visits while attending the University of Maryland. Today, Foxcatcher is public land. After du Pont died in 1965, the state of Maryland bought some 5,600 acres south of the border and named it the Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area. Equestrians still ply the miles of trails (more…)